Off the Grid – 9/9/14

                Today we moved from Sona Pani to the Binsar Ecological Reserve and are staying the night in a “Tourist Rest House” that has no electricity. And when I say no electricity I mean that there are candles and matches in the room to use when it gets dark outside. Living in India for the past two weeks or so I have experienced the random power outages that occur. Heck, we were in the National Museum in Delhi and the power went out so we had to pull out our phone flashlights to look at the exhibits for 5-10 minutes. At Sona Pani the power would go out almost every single night (we wouldn’t use electricity during the day), but at least there were solar water heaters so that we had warm water (most times – apparently Chase and my cabin was more in the shade than the other ones and we had considerably less hot water than everyone else). Here in Binsar we have to ask for a bucket of hot water to bathe in the morning. In Delhi it was easy to get away with cold showers because it was disgustingly hot and humid, but here it’s pretty cold and the last thing I want to do is dump a bucket of icy water over my head. In Sona Pani our “hot” water wasn’t always functioning and there were a couple bucket baths that felt more like the ALS ice bucket challenge than a way to clean myself. In any event, it’s been kind of fun “living off the grid” with no internet access or really any news from the outside world. I guess the last thing I heard as news from the US was that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got married (Brangelina was all over the papers in Delhi the day we arrived). After I get back in June I expect it’ll be both exciting and overwhelming to catch up on all the United States pop culture that I’ve missed, even if in Banaras I have greater access to internet and stuff like that.

PS: HAPPY 17^TH BIRTHDAY JT!!!